tdog

A cautionary tale this 4th of July (the first time this holiday has come on a Wednesday (IIRC) since I began blogging a week after 9-11… or perhaps not). We bring you this WaPo essay by historian John Fabian Witt (a prof at the alma mater I share with Senator and future President Barack Obama)… also available by clicking on the picture of the American flag, as seen by most of the rest of the world these days. The subject of the essay concerns the rule of law as applicable to war, the spearhead of our President’s agenda to rule...

Our friend Lindsay Beyerstein just lost her father, Dr. Barry Beyerstein; her moving note on his passing is here. My heartfelt condolences go out to Lindsay and to her family on their loss. Here is a post entitled “Al Gore and the Alpha Girls,” from November 2002, one of the best blog posts you will ever read. Its author was Jim Capozzola of the Rittenhouse Review, who, I have had the privilege of meeting and corresponding with. I am sad to say that Jim passed away yesterday. Dr. Beyerstein was 60. Jim was 45. Rest in peace, gentlemen. Rest in...

The flurry of activity at the close of the just-ended term of the United States Supreme Court just leads one to say, regardless of their ideology, “Wow!” Certainly, the overall trend is that, without the cover of the center-right Sandra Day O’Connor behind which Justice Anthony Kennedy could pretend that he too was also center-right, rather than extreme-hard-right-to-the-point-of-near-psychotic, like the Dubya appointees John “Burn-Witch-Burn” Roberts and Scam Alito, the Reagan-appointed Kennedy’s true relatively right-wing leanings become more visible, and hence, the Court as a whole has shifted to the right on issues from upholding a Congressional ban on a second-term...

Gaillard Hunt is an attorney in private practice in Silver Spring, Maryland. Mr. Hunt represents Pakistani national Saifullah Paracha, a businessman and father of four who was detained by American officials at an airport in Bangkok, Thailand in July 2003, where he was abducted, and in a pattern consistent with other so-called extraordinary renditions, had his clothing removed, and was thrust on a waiting plane and taken to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan where he was interrogated for over a year, and then moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he has been detained ever since. Mr. Paracha suffers from heart...

I’m still too busy laughing at the recent insistence of the Office of the Vice President (with the tacit blessing of the President) that Dick Cheney is above the law (as usual) to comment on it. This time, Cheney and Addington argue that OVP is above the law of handling classified information, because the office of the vice-president, which John Adams and numerous others have regarded as the epitome of a do-nothing post when they held the office– is super-special and part of the legislative branch! Hey, whatever gets you above the law, right? This LATimes piece, “No veep is...

Such is the story we get from this WaPo piece documenting the sorry saga of one Bradley Schlozman, acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights of the United States Justice Department. Schlozman removed a number of career attorneys from key civil rights functions. Those attorneys happened to be women of various ethnic minorities, only to be replaced by White males… to be fair, some of those women were Democrats… (and I understand one couldn’t be trusted because she once voted for McCain). Traditionally, it was felt that “diversity” in the government agency responsible for ensuring diversity elsewhere… is a good...

And so House Speaker Pelosi had to intervene against two of her Democratic denizens (Reps. John Dingell and Rick Boucher, [“D”-Auto-Industry]), and killed their proposals to load up a House energy bill with wet-dreams-for-the-auto-industry, including such measures as pre-empting California’s ability to regulate auto emissions on its own, a measure that has been extraordinarily helpful in reducing air pollution there and elsewhere, and which will be helpful in California efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. Well, here we go again: if you want to help Detroit’s real problems, free GM, Ford and Chrysler from their killling health care costs and pension...

Well, well… it seems that Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who was part of a surrender associated with tying conditions to Iraq war funding for troop withdrawal (even symbolic conditions and goals) lest Democrats be called for “not supporting the troops” by not working over Memorial Day weekend… has decided that Democrats shall, if necessary, work over the precious July 4th vacation “district work interval”… to pass the President’s signature immigration bill. Which leads to the simple question of… wtf? This is not a Democratic signature issue… and if it is, the solution proposed (creating a legal class of...

It looks like it could be a complete, clean slate (i.e., the Palestinian Authority, a/k/a the Fatah movement) may be just about ready to give up amidst fighting with Hamas in Gaza, and pull back to the West Bank, leaving Hamas in Gaza… in short, this LA Times analysis suggests the possible end of the so-called two-state solution, with Palestinians resigned to the simple reality that their procreation habits (i.e. having a lot more children than Israeli Jews) will eventually make them the majority, and eventually, the vast majority, in the population of “the neighborhood” of Israel, Gaza and the...

I think its not an irrational position to suggest that increasing fuel efficiency standards in our automobiles and trucks will have a number of salutory effects, from reducing emissions, to improving our national security by, among other things, lowering our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Which explains why the effort to thwart the recently passed increases in such standards in the House is being thwarted in the Senate by Kit Bond (R-MO) and, of course, two Democrats from Michigan (Levin and Stabenow). Naturally, the Big Three auto-makers contend that they will be at a competitive disadvantage if they are obliged...